Blancheporte Selects Salesforce to Support its Digital Strategy

Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), the global leader in CRM, announced that Blancheporte—the sixth largest French e-merchant in the fashion sector and the leading company for the over-50 market—has partnered with Salesforce to build the brand's new ecommerce site, providing its customers with seamless, personalized and omnichannel shopping experiences. Two projects initiated include Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Einstein for Commerce, adding artificial intelligence for greater customization along the customer journey, and improved time-to-market to ensure Blancheporte’s collections are always up-to-date.

Putting artificial intelligence to work for an ultra-personal shopping experience

With a background in distance selling, Blancheporte has become a pioneer in data analysis and use, learning how to know and recognize every one of its two million customers. The brand has created robust omnichannel customer journeys, meeting shoppers at intervals on its social networks, website, blog and through the pages of its catalogue. Einstein for Commerce will allow Blancheporte to take personalization even further by using artificial intelligence to decode its data, wherever it comes from, and create highly engaging customer experiences.

Synchronizing and speeding up time to market

Since the launch of its retail website in 2005, Blancheporte has relied on a more frequent renewal of its collections, styled by its in-house design office. The brand now offers 1,600 new models every year, many of which are only available on its website. With Commerce Cloud, Blancheporte will now be able to analyze the reception of its innovations in real-time, both online and in-store, and adjust its ranges accordingly.

“Coming from a distance selling background, a pioneer in data analysis and use, Blancheporte has learned how to know and recognize every one of its two million customers. By linking our historic experience to the powerful Salesforce platform, we will be able to adapt our collections further to the wishes of the fifty-somethings, present our range in more flexible ways and further improve our plans for retention and increasing customers. This collaborative partnership will also enable us to improve our own skills so that we can further decode and respond to our customers’ expectations,” said Salvatore Spatafora, associate marketing, multi-channel and customer director for Blancheporte.

“We are proud to support Blancheporte, a two-hundred-year-old company that has become the sixth largest e-merchant in the French fashion sector, as it moves into the next stage of its development. With Commerce Cloud, we are going to bring data collected on all of Blancheporte’s channels together so they can interact with each other. Gathered on the Salesforce platform, they will become smarter and more efficient, working for a redesigned customer experience. Using the full power of artificial intelligence is an important way of gaining competitive advantage. Blancheporte has understood this perfectly,” added Olivier Derrien, Salesforce Managing Director in France.

About Blancheporte

Founded in Tourcoing (59) in 1806, Blancheporte is today the 6th largest fashion & home e-retailer, the leading fashion site for the 50-somethings market and 3rd in the plus-size segment. Blancheporte’s in-house design office creates its own accessible fashion & home collections, to suit women's preferences for colours and sizes.

Through effective use of the paper/digital combination, Blancheporte maintains the joy of receiving a catalogue, while strengthening its unique position online. Its website gets 2 million unique visitors a month, with 35% of searches also on mobile. In addition, Blancheporte sends out 70 million catalogues a year to its communities, each an inspiring encounter for the customer.

Four Keys to the Future of Data-Driven Marketing

1. If data is like oil, AI is like a refinery

At current growth rates, the average brand is expected to use 45 data sources by 2025.

In 2019, brands on average are using 15 different data sources to run their operations and campaigns, but data usage is growing exponentially. Through our State of Marketing reports, Salesforce has been tracking brand data usage for the past three years.

The massive amount of data we've been collecting — and will collect in the future — is creating a massive data glut. Making sense of it all is a job for artificial intelligence (AI).

AI can analyze all of this data and leverage it in real time to create personalized customer journeys. It's necessary for brands to move towards a future where every interaction with customers is customized to them, in real time. If data is like oil, AI is the means of refining and applying it. Hence the reason we see widespread adoption of AI by major brands. High-performing marketing organizations have already begun to leverage AI, and are currently 2.7x more likely to be using AI than under-performers.

2. Use a DMP to uncover deeper audience insights

More than 55% of marketing leaders currently use a Data Management Platform (DMP), and an additional 35% plan to adopt one within the next two years. Although many marketers only see DMPs as useful for solving basic issues like content personalization and frequency caps on ads, high-performers have begun to unlock an additional DMP feature — delivering audience insights.

For example, imagine a customer visits your website from their mobile device. Can you recognize them in that moment and create a real time experience for them? Not if you can’t solve the “identify crisis” and figure out who they are. The ability to maintain a single view of a customer across multiple channels is why so many leading brands have already invested in DMPs. If your brand hasn’t yet, it likely will. By 2020, marketers expect their DMP usage to rise by 64%.

3. Find a balance between personalization and privacy

Today's consumers are increasingly empowered by technology — and by government privacy regulations. It's now the first order of business for brands to obtain permission to use consumer data. Without this permission, you can't use data to create personalized customer experiences. As such, gaining and maintaining consumer trust is table stakes for modern brands.

High-performing marketing organizations are 7.1x more likely to be completely satisfied with their ability to balance personalization with privacy. Consumers trust brands that provide the following when it comes to data collection:

Explanation

When you ask consumers for permission to use their data, explain how the data will be used.

Transparency

Be clear about your data policies, and never hide anything from your consumers.

Ownership

Let consumers know where they can go to access and manage all the data you've stored.

These three pillars allow today's leading brands to balance personalization with privacy. They're the foundation that all brands should use to build trust with their audience.

Get yourself a Chief Data Officer

One-third of marketers say it’s difficult to meet current data regulations, like the EU GDPR — and data regulations are only going to get stricter in the future. That's why today's leading organizations have started putting someone in charge of managing customer data — a Chief Data Officer (CDO).

By 2020, Gartner predicts that 90% of all large organizations in regulated industries will have CDOs. That percentage should be 100%, and the reason is clear. So much data flows in and out of companies — without a central manager, it simply won't be managed. To be a best-in-class organization, you’ll need to have someone in charge. They'll need to be accountable for ensuring that data is collected properly, protected, and used ethically — across your entire business. As such, CDOs will be an essential hire in a strategy to establish consumer trust.